Junk

This has been a very depressing week for me, professionally. I've sorted and/or catalogued 112 books, many (if not all) of them full of nothing but senseless, amoral drivel. They are the brain children of various modern (many of them "highly-acclaimed") novelists. Many of these works were tossed by WorldCat into a genre entitled "psychological fiction", and, from all appearances, the titles are every bit as bad as that sounds.

I've been trying to sort through them, reading the summaries on the insides of the dustjackets, to try and pull out the ones that are so filthy they ought not be tolerated in our collections. If it were up to me they'd all be feeding a bonfire on the lawn, but Terence, the Aquisitions Librarian, said, "Well, since we have a literature department we really ought to keep the works of well-known authors for the sake of their research." I responded, "But they're so seedy, Terry. They're either as bad or worse than romance novels. Do we really need to keep such junk?" "Well, it may be junk, but it's famous junk, so yes." He was amused at the expression this got him. "Who in the sam heck acclaims these pervs, anyway? . . . " I mumbled, turning back to my computer screen. "Go ahead and go through them, though." said Terence, "If there are any you think are really beyond all boundaries, set them aside and I'll look at them."

Sooo, yeah, it's been a tough week. Playing the "how immoral is this novel?" game all the day long, filling my mind with disgusting images and then filling bookcarts, databases and shelves with perverse stories about people breaking every command of the decalogue, and breaking them with pizazz.

I have the whole weekend off. God be praised!!!!